Cloud & Service Management blog

Get your
questions ready for the next Ask the Expert (ATE) event will be held on
November 8th, 2011 from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm Eastern Time USA. Register for this event The "Ask the Experts Online Jam"
(ATE) is a valuable opportunity for Global Tivoli User Community (TUC)
Members to connect with real-world experts on a range of Tivoli
products. These experts, many from IBM development, are recruited to
answer questions on an array of product topics for a concentrated period
of 12 hours This upcoming ATE event will include experts on Tivoli and Maximo topics including: Asset Management (Maximo)
Tivoli Asset Management for IT • Tivoli Usage and Accounting Management • IBM Maximo Asset Management (IBM
Maximo Asset Management for Oil & Gas /IBM Maximo Asset Management
for Utilities /IBM Maximo Asset Management for Life Sciences /IBM Maximo
Asset Management for Nuclear /IBM Maximo Asset Management for
Transportation /IBM Maximo Asset Management for Service Providers) • Maximo Scheduler • Maximo Spatial • Maximo Linear

This session will run from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm Eastern Time USA To accommodate AP and EMEA members, questions may be submitted 9 hours prior to the event. To find the time in your city check out the World Clock meeting planner website. WHY SHOULD YOU PARTICIPATE?

It's free to attend.

Your technical questions will be answered directly from the IBM experts themselves, no middleman!

You may ask as many questions as you'd like.

You can learn more about your products and gain a competitive edge for yourself and your company.

Keep up with the next generation technology, and get the scoop on new product release dates and the improvements being made.

ABOUT THE TIVOLI USER COMMUNITYThe Tivoli User Community
(TUC) is the largest network of Tivoli professionals in the world.
With more than 30,000+ members in 138 countries and 160+ local and
special interest groups, the TUC links a global network of users,
developers, business partners, and IBM sales/technical staff. Members
share a common interest in increasing the knowledge of Tivoli and
Maximo software and solutions to solve business problems. Register to become a member today.We look forward to your participation.

IT departments at financial services firms are under tremendous pressure to ensure servers, desktops, mobile devices and other endpoints are secure and compliant. At the same time, they’re continually looking for ways to save time and resources in areas like software licensing, patch management, asset inventory and security configuration. IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix technology, is helping these firms better understand and manage the status of their endpoints, regardless of where they’re located.

In the below video of Nate Howe, VP of Risk Management at Western Federal Credit Union talks about how Tivoli Endpoint Manager provides real-time patching for operating systems and third party applications and utilities. With over $1.4 billion in assets and 32 branches in 10 states serving more than 120,000 members nationwide, Western Federal Credit Union is one of the leading credit unions in the United States. Nate explains that they now have a single view into all aspects of the systems and security for their 400 employees, 100 servers and 2 data centers, including a better inventory of installed software. And, they can do more with fewer people, which enables them to focus less on infrastructure and more on business applications and enabling business automation.

Another customer that’s realizing benefits from Tivoli Endpoint Manager is SunTrust Banks, Inc. Based in Atlanta, SunTrust enjoys leading market positions in some of the highest growth markets in the United States and also serves clients in selected markets nationally. SunTrust has a highly distributed environment with nearly 1,800 branch locations and no local IT resources at most of those locations. Using Tivoli Endpoint Manager, SunTrust now maintains a 98.5 percent patch and update compliance rate. They’ve also decreased update and patch cycle times from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 days while increasing productivity through automation. Read the SunTrust case study here.

By enabling improved endpoint visibility and new levels of automation, Tivoli Endpoint Manager is a powerful solution to help financial services firms enhance their security and compliance.

Today’s business environment calls for information sharing at an unprecedented scale. Sensitive information is shared between organizations, end consumers and even business partners. The biggest challenge that organizations face in doing so, is how to ensure that sensitive information is securely shared with different parties and that the right people are accessing the data. With the adoption of cloud and Software as a service deployment models, ensuring secure access is even more critical and challenging.

Consider a scenario where a government agency needs to share information with different agencies, local governments, citizens or even with other business entities (eg. Revenue agency that needs to share information with citizens and other entities like a tax preparation service). If one of the entities is operating in a public cloud environment, its becomes critical for government to ensure that right person is accessing the right data without sacrificing privacy, security or scalability (party requesting information really is the government revenue agency or tax preparer they claim to be).

Over the past couple years, we have seen how the US government has taken steps to ensure secure sharing of data between agencies with regulations such as FISMA, which was introduced in 2002, bringing attention to the critical nature of cyber security and its impact on national security.

Identity is at the core of any information sharing transaction. Hence whenever an individual attempts to access secure online sites or web portals, their identity has to be verified to ensure they are authorized to view that data. Additionally from the end user or citizen’s perspective, they should be able to set up their identity once and then log in to multiple systems without having to log in multiple times.

Federated identity management is the solution which enables multiple applications to share user credentials based on trust. This is especially critical in supporting cloud deployments for secure information sharing across private, public and hybrid clouds. With federated SSO, users can log on to the sites of multiple businesses and organizations by using the same user id and password, hence gaining a seamless and secure entry to multiple applications.

Tivoli Federated identity manager from IBM is an access management solution that provides web and federated single sign on to end users across multiple applications resulting in improved user experience. Tivoli Federated Identity Manager enables central management of access, enhanced user productivity and facilitates trust by delivering single sign on across separately managed infrastructure domains, both within an organization and across organizations.

Last week the IBM attended the UKI itSM Forum and what a
great event it was! Some really thought provoking and motivating sessions, as
well as some truly interesting conversations with our clients and
prospects.

Below are a few of the highlights from the sessions attended
- would be great to hear anyone else’s thoughts on what their key take-home
messages were from the event.

Session 1 – Introduction by Barry Coreless – Chairman of the
itSMF

Barry talked about how he sees the future of ITSM – the
growing automated and ever more complex tool sets, and an ever increasing
bewildering array of devices. The main
take home message for me was that he believed that organisations that linked
best practices and industry disciplines are the ones that will truly succeed.

Session 2 – Keynote from Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson DBE

A fantastic motivational speech from Tanni – including memorial
statements like “if you are going to spend time thinking... then think BIG!” She spoke about why it is important to think
about how you can be the best you can be and how individual success if not
always about the individuals themselves, but about the team they have around
them. Tough times call for tough
choices, she continued, and it is how you deal with these, improve and move on
that is what will make you successful.

Session 3 – our own Ivor Macfarlane – Can IT people be
Service Managers?

Ivor was introduced as a man whose middle name was “ITIL”
and clearly his reputation preceded him, as we had a full house with over 60 of
the 300 delegates in the room. Ivor spoke
about how Service Managers generally have a low profile, and are orientated to
achieving another person’s hopes and desires.
He carried on the debate by saying that the best attribute a Service
Manager can have is to be invisible! Continuing
that if management don’t empower you as a Service Manager then your stuffed! A final take key message was then given, “Go
to the board – change the change process!”

Session 4 – An interactive panel session hosted by Don Page

Some really interesting stats came up in this session to the
questions asked to the delegate audience my favourite 3 below:

1. 1. Cloud Computing is here to stay – what effect
will it have on ITSM?

Major – 43%, A
bit – 36%, A little – 17%, No Opinion – 4%

2. 2. Your business now understands and is taking
seriously the importance of ITSM as an essential business enabler?

Very Seriously – 12%, Lip Service
– 42%, We don’t talk to them and they don’t take us seriously -20%, Don’t Know–
9%, Don’t Care – 17%

3. 3. Should organisations encourage Social Media to
facilitate communication between IT and end users?

One of my favourite sessions from the event, very
interesting to hear an analysts point of view. He started by stating that
Service Managers can’t deal with the value because we don’t understand the
cost, there is little transparency IT costs and the value it brings. He continued saying that costs are
continually being cut, whilst the demand for IT continues to grow. He told
delegates to take an honest look at their ITSM capabilities and short comings,
in context of what business needs, then link IT services to business
outcomes. Final message for me was “Cost
is important but value is more important... if we could demonstrate the value
they would be encouraging us to spend more”.

Session 6 – Martin Neville – Flattening the Curve

In the last session of the day, Martin discussed what companies
should be looking for from their tool providers, and that the best tool providers
are proactive not reactive. He set out ground rules for both sides – be honest
from the start, early efforts pay interest in the long term, perception is reality – stats do not lie, the
time to innovate is at the start – not when things are looking desperate, short term contractual wrangling will damage
the relationship long term and most importantly KEEP talking!

Nigel spoke about how vision is our most valuable asset and leadership
is an act, rather than a position. We
need to show up and engage! It needs to be a progressive improvement, baby
steps are ok, and it needs to be realistic, achievable and practical – don’t
aim for perfection, do something practical.
His take home message for me really was for success, we have to
acknowledge the reality of uncertainty.

Another really interesting session, starting with the
question should organisations use a SM suite of tools from one vendor, or best
of breed tools from various vendors and attempt to integrate them. The answer is not as simple as it seems! He
emphasised the importance of running a Proof of Concept before ever fully
implementing a new tool. Organisations
need to ask themselves, is this vendor that is sleeping or evolving and
improving?

Session 3 – Dennis Shields - The 2010 Machine

My final session of the day, Dennis opened the session by
explaining people like direction, but believe their managers are out of touch. Bad
management however means the unit will not function properly. People need to be
given clear and fair directives, otherwise efficiency plummets and costs
escalates, we need to take a long term perspective if the company and its
infrastructure is going to be successful.